


Darkness Far Behind

by SilverDagger



Category: Claymore
Genre: Gen, Grudging almost-friendship, Pre-Canon, Self-Destructive Tendencies, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 02:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helen is newly certified, still struggling to find the balance between human and monster, and on her first mission with a stoic stranger named Deneve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darkness Far Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ladiesbingo, for the square pre-canonfic. Warnings for some violent/potentially disturbing imagery and self-destructive/semi-suicidal actions. Also for language - Helen swears a _lot_ in this.

The space is closed in – dark, though Helen's eyes can see well enough through the gloom, at least enough to make out the surfaces and edges of things, the uneven slope of the tunnel floor beneath her feet. A bit of yoki would let her see more, but not to the point where it would be useful, and truth is, this place has her on edge enough already without pushing too close to _that_ side of things. She can hear water dripping somewhere, _plink-plink-plink_ in a maddening almost-rhythm, and there are tree roots poking through the stonework at odd intervals, tangled like nests of snakes. The air reeks of human blood.

That isn't much of a surprise, considering.

The missing villager is face-down in the blood-soaked earth, limbs splayed out like some abandoned marionnette. She doesn't have to look closer to know that if she kicks the corpse over, it will be opened up from throat to groin, hollowed out like a cored apple. She's seen what it looks like when Yoma feed.

Not that Helen goes around kicking corpses, given the option to avoid it. Her handler would tell her it's disrespectful to the dead. The way she figures it, it's just plain bad luck.

“Well, that's one of 'em,” she says, and almost manages to keep her voice steady. “Think they'll be wanting him back? 'Cause let me tell you, I could do with _not_ hauling the poor gutless bastard around with us like some fainting bride.”

Her comrade looks up, golden eyes shining in the dark, and laughs roughly. “If you're going to be sick, just don't do it in my direction.”

Helen scowls, and kicks a clod of dirt in the general direction of the dead man, just to show how little she cares.

“I'm not some pitiful trainee,” she says, “so don't you worry about that.” Doesn't mention that she's barely certified, that she's only ranked thirty-four, though she doesn't plan on _that_ lasting long. This other soldier – Deneve, her name is – is already into the upper twenties and rising fast, and dangerous the way people who don't care if they die are dangerous. Truth to tell, Deneve scares her a little. Too quiet. People like that could be thinking anything. 

Of course, if Deneve knew the kind of thoughts that are running through Helen's head right at the moment, chances are she'd be a little quicker with that blade. Or maybe not. It's hard to say sometimes, with these quiet ones.

“Hey,” Deneve says, “are you – ”

“Fine,” Helen says, and smiles. It isn't a natural smile, not quite. It feels wrong at the edges. She can feel Deneve's eyes on her, assessing. “It's just – you know. This fucking _smell_.”

“Yeah,” Deneve says. “It's bad. You get used to it.” She sounds sympathetic, but there's a low note in her voice, hovering unspoken – _you'd better._

Helen can respect that. She's well aware that half the newly certified don't make it through their first year. She's well aware of _why._

“When we get back to town,” she says, scrubbing a hand through her hair, “I'm going to take a five-hour bath, and then I'm going to sleep like a dog. And then I'm going to get drunk for a week.”

“I don't doubt it,” Deneve says drily. Then, after a moment, “I don't blame you.”

She walks over, and lays a hand on Helen's shoulder, pulling her back. “Forget the corpse. If they want him back, they can come and get him. We've got work to do.”

“Right,” Helen says. She knows their targets are waiting deeper in this maze of tunnels, and she wants them dead so she can get out of this damnable rat's nest and back under the sun, where people belong. “Let's get this job over with already.”

She takes the lead, pushing a tangle of roots out of the way to duck through a low passage with Deneve following close and silent. She moves through the darkness with all the confidence that Helen tries to project, and Helen's not about to admit it, but it's a comfort to have the older warrior at her back. This place gives her the chills. And there's something about the corpse in the hallway back there that keeps nagging at her, something that doesn't seem quite right in a way that goes beyond the blatant wrongness of a dead man discarded careless on the floor with barely time for the blood to cool – and then, with that thought, it hits her.

She holds up a hand, and Deneve halts behind her, waiting.

“That man wasn't dead this morning,” she says.

Deneve looks at her with narrowed eyes, impatient. “What's your point?”

“My point is,” Helen says, thinking aloud, “if they didn't kill _him_ right away, there might be others. And look, before you even start, I know what the policy is, but if there's people still alive...”

Deneve nods slowly, considering Helen with something that seems almost like reappraisal, maybe even respect.

“They're our first priority,” she says, as if that had never been in question, and Helen likes her a little bit better just for that. “Are you good to find them and get them out on your own?”

Helen grins, and this time it does feel natural, fierce and just a little arrogant. “Like I said, I'm not a trainee.”

“Then we split up,” Deveve says. “You find the humans, and I'll deal with the yoma.”

“Alone?” Helen says. “You sure about that?”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“I just don't think it would be the best idea. Seems like too much risk, you know?”

It's a mistake. There's a moment when Deneve looks almost shaken, and a flicker of old emotion in her eyes and her aura like a tempered alloy of pride and shame, and it leaves Helen feeling like she'd caught a glimpse of something she'd never been intended to see. Then something in the set of Deneve's face goes fixed and cold, dangerously calm.

“Are you saying I can't handle it?” she asks. “Or are you saying that you can't?”

“I can handle it,” Helen says.

“Then stop questioning orders. We rendezvous at the entrance.”

“As her ladyship commands,” Helen says, and snaps a mocking salute, which Deneve does not deign to acknowledge before striding on, into the darkness ahead. There's a second when Helen almost wants to follow, pull her back, but she doesn't know if that's because she's worried about Deneve or herself or something worse – _can't take the pressure, rookie?_ – and soon enough her chance passes and she's alone. And Deneve is right. The villagers are their first priority.

She doesn't know where the yoma are keeping them – if there are any left alive to begin with – but she's got a good enough guess where to look first. The warlord who built this place kept dungeons down here, and chances are the yoma are smart enough to make good use of them. And yeah, there's the impression of footsteps in the dust – bootmarks, clawmarks, a trail that's easy enough to follow without resorting to tracking by scent or by yoki – and she sets off again, trying to think about the job ahead of her, and not the darkness or Deneve alone in it. Get the humans out. They're the ones that matter.

When she finds them, the prisoners are huddled together against the far wall of a holding cell, unchained but trapped behind heavy iron bars. They're filthy, and they smell like sour sweat and old terror and blood, both old and fresh. There's five of them, Helen thinks. Five alive, and the dead man in the tunnels, and that makes... she takes a quick accounting of the missing and the dead, and figures that makes twelve gone who won't be coming back. But there's five here, alive, and that's more than she was expecting. Two young men and a woman in once-fine merchants' clothes, a woman with grey in her hair who clutches at a ruined shawl with shaking hands and a man with a long, shallow cut down the side of his face. She isn't sure whether they're the lucky ones or not.

They shrink back when she steps closer, and she hears one whimper in pain or fear and remembers that humans can't see much more in these tunnels than the shape of her silhouette and the sheen of her eyes, golden in the darkness.

“It's alright,” she says, in a hushed whisper. “I'm a – a Claymore, OK, not a damn yoma, and I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm here to bust you sorry sonsabitches out of here, that's all, so just sit tight for a second while I take care of this door. I promise I'm not going to hurt you.”

She snaps the lock in her hands without much difficulty, though she hisses at the pain, brief though it is. The rusted hinges squeal as she pulls the door open, and she winces at the noise. Every sound is too loud in this tiny room, every single one of her senses too sharp, and she isn't deluded enough to imagine that the way her stomach twists at the scent of human flesh and blood in the still air is only nausea. She curses beneath her breath as she steps back from the cell door, runs a hand through her hair and looks back at the prisoners, who are watching her with no sign of trust or any particular eagerness to step closer. There's a moment, envisioning herself from the outside in, when she can't really blame them. But Helen's never been one for introspection when there's work to be done, and right now there's no time for wasting.

“If there's anyone who can't walk,” she says, “now's the time to to let me know. Otherwise, unless you'd prefer to stay where you are, I'd suggest following me.”

It's the old woman who steps forward first, with a terse “lead the way, then, witch” and a sign against evil that Helen would bet good silver she hadn't been intended to see. Then one of the merchants follows, hesitant at first but courageous enough once he sees that a superstitious old harridan fifty years his senior has managed to avoid gruesome disembowelment at their rescuer's hands, and that's enough for the rest of them to take their chances too.

“Keep close,” she tells them, “be quick, be careful, it doesn't really matter if you're quiet. And if I tell you to freeze, or run, you damn well do it.”

The villagers don't argue, just fall into step behind her, silent except for the stumbling scuff of their footsteps, the too-loud rustle of their clothing and their breath. Distracting. It's an effort not to keep looking back over her shoulder, just to make sure she hasn't lost anyone, that no one is about to panic or drop dead where they stand. It's enough to make her realize how long it's been since she had to account for anyone whose presence she couldn't sense at her back, and remember with a start that she used to live like that all the time, that there had been a time when anything else had been frightening and unnatural. She'd promised herself, once, that she wouldn't forget what it's like to be human. Now, she's beginning to wonder if she'll be able to help it, and whether she'll even realize when she does – but there's no time for that, no place for doubt. It's just this mission getting under her skin, that's all. She'll feel more like herself once she's out of here.

To their credit, her charges stay close, and don't do anything stupid. Maybe they're smart, or canny enough to know when not to take chances, maybe just too worn down to do anything except put one foot in front of the other. Either way, Helen is grateful. They pass through tunnels lined with broken stone, following the same winding, steadily rising path that had led Helen down to the cells, until they reach the remains of the entry hall, and the sight of light shining through the half-buried doorway.

One of the merchants breaks for the entrance as soon as he sees it, and she doesn't stop him, or bother to reprimand his lack of caution. Stupid move or not, the only danger is behind them, and she can't deny that there's a keen relief in stepping out into open space, air that isn't suffused with the stench of dank earth and death. The light is momentarily blinding, the breeze sweet and cool, and she's never felt anything more welcome in her life.

Deneve isn't there.

The villagers stand in a loose knot, silent and unsure, blinking in the sunlight like they can't quite trust that it's real. Deneve would tell her to take them back to town, not concern herself with anything else. Can't wait here – that would put the humans in danger, after all, if anything goes wrong. Deneve had agreed with her that they were first priority – and sent _her_ to fetch the bastards, and taken the dangerous work on herself.

She concentrates, struggling to pick out Deneve's signature from the faint traces of yoma energy emmanating from the tunnels, trying get a sense of what might be happening and whether she has to worry. Deneve is strong upper twenties, not a damn rookie like her. Deneve can take care of herself, and won't appreciate any interference. She _knows_ that, the same way she knows mission protocol, rules and regs and the Organization's priorities, the way she knows exactly why those rules matter. Going by the book is what keeps them human – she'd been told that in training, never seen a reason not to believe it. What she feels, though, is a growing unease, a low, elusive sense of _this isn't how it's supposed to go_ , and she can't bring herself to shut it down. She can't catch anything below, no matter how she strains her senses. And then she does – a sharp spike of youki, strong enough to pick up clear even at this distance, sudden and violent and _wrong_.

“Shit,” she mutters, glancing at the villagers, and this time it is nausea when she looks at them, the bitterness of guilt. Either way, she's abandoning someone. But there's no yoma in the vicinity but the ones down below, and she'd scouted out the area well enough beforehand to know there's no chance of bandits between here and home. The villagers will be safe enough without her to escort, maybe safer if she needs to buy some time against their old friends in the tunnels. Hell, they'll probably feel safer, too.

“Do you know the way back to town?” she asks.

“Aye,” the old woman says, fixing her with a suspicious glare.

“Can you make it back on your own?”

“We'd be right useless if we couldn't, now.”

“Good,” Helen says, “Cause I've got a bit more work to do around here. Tell 'em if I don't make it back by evening, it was obviously more'n a two person job, and they should send a damn team. And pour a bit of whiskey on my grave. The good stuff. I swear by all that's holy I'll haunt you if you don't.”

And then she reaches for her sword and runs for the entrance, not bothering to look back.

Darkness rushes in around her again, tunnels closing in as the door to the surface falls further behind, but this time she reaches for her youki without a second's doubt. The surge of power hits her like a fist to the face, and she can see every blind trailing root and crumbling archway, every thread on every moldering scrap of tapestry hanging along the walls. She can feel her teeth sharpening as she runs, her face distorting and nails growing longer, but she doesn't care. She needs speed, strength, she can't afford to fuck around pretending to be something she isn't. 

When the hallway she's running through opens out into sudden space, she stumbles to a halt, cursing beneath her breath. Whatever instinct had driven her to run, she realizes it had been the right one, and despite that, despite everything, she had _still_ almost been too slow. Because Deneve is standing in the mouth of the far corridor, and she's holding off an entire pack of yoma on her own, one against – fuck. One against ten or more, and they're bottled up in the tunnel now, but Deneve is wounded too, blood running down the side of her face and her arm, a gaping hole in her abdomen, and Helen can see her faltering.

Deneve blocks the sweep of a yoma's claws with an unsteady parry, falls back and slashes wildly, driving her opponent back long enough to regain her footing but not long enough to reclaim her place in the doorway. It's all the opening the rest of them need to break through. They swarm out around her like insects, and Helen realizes that there's no time for strategy now, or caution. She charges.

She takes the head off one and the arm off another before they have a chance to rally, fighting to get through before Deneve falls, because if she falls there's no chance she'll be able to make it up again. This time the fevered rush of youki is a welcome madness, driving her steps and lending strength to every reckless swing of her blade, and as she twists around and splits another yoma's skull, she realizes that she's actually laughing with exhileration. And then they're back to back and holding their ground, and it's mostly a blur, just strike and block and counterstrike until one more yoma's corpse falls heavily from her sword, and she realizes that there aren't any more of them.

Deneve is leaning heavily on the hilt of her sword, head bowed in exhaustion, her wounds already closing. They're both battered and filthy with dirt and blood, the ground around them littered with dead yoma, and for a moment, Helen can't quite credit that the fight is truly over. _Fifteen_ , she thinks, counting bodies with half her attention on the aftermath and the rest on willing her body to heal, knitting torn skin and muscle back together. _We killed fifteen of them_ , and somewhere in the back of her mind she's proud of that, but mostly she's just tired.

Deneve looks up at her, her face unreadable beneath the minute signs of pain and weariness. 

“Any prisoners?” she asks.

“Five of them,” Helen says. “Safe. Alive. On their way back home.” And she can't help but feel a little lighter, because safe and alive weren't words she was expecting to apply to anyone today, and because the woman in front of her is alive too, despite her best efforts, and surely that has to count for _something_.

“Then you disobeyed me after all,” Deneve says softly. It doesn't sound like condemnation, not entirely, but her voice is as cold as it's ever been, and Helen has to fight down the sudden urge to lash out in retaliation, say something harsh and derisive and mostly undeserved. Anger is dangerous, if uncontrolled, and she's too close to the edge right now for her temper to be anything else.

“Yeah,” she says. “I did. You're welcome.” And then she flicks the blood from her sword and turns to leave, because she's too tired to give a damn about orders or respect for hierarchy. She just wants to get out of here. They've probably just saved an entire goddamn village, and that leaves her with a mission report to complete, and a bath to scrub the blood from beneath her nails, and a lot of drinking to do. The sooner she gets started, the better.

It doesn't take Deneve long to follow, and soon she's pacing along easily beside Helen, never falling behind or slipping ahead, never speaking. If her injuries pain her, or give her trouble, she shows no indication. Whether or not she's angry, it's impossible to say. Whether or not Helen cares... _Hah,_ she thinks. _Enough with the denial, rookie. You care._ And then, glancing across at her reluctant comrade, still pale and grim but looking stronger by the second, _Hell, you know it ain't obeying orders that keeps us human._

The trip back to the surface is the good kind of boring, which is to say no problems, no surprises, a minimum of corpses, and once they make it out into open air again, things are even better. _Safe_ , she thinks, _clean_ , or as close as possible to either of those things as one of the Organization's warriors could ever be, which is close enough. Even Deneve seems more at ease with the sunlight surrounding them and a light breeze ruffling their hair, and when they stop by a stream to wash the traces of battle and the yomas' lair from their skin, she turns abruptly to Helen and says, “you did alright back there.”

“Told you I can handle myself,” Helen says, and doesn't think about the dark of the underground, the outline of a dead man splayed out in a pool of his own blood, because that isn't relevant now. Deneve clasps her shoulder briefly, gives her the barest nod of approval, and says, “never doubted it.”

Halfway back to the village, they catch up to the prisoners, making their way slowly but steadily along a winding dirt trail. They don't look like they've stopped moving since Helen sent them off – smart, but no longer necessary – and she calls a halt to let them catch their breath, and to share a bit of food and water from her pack. Deneve watches from a little ways away as she distributes pieces of travel bread and dried fruit, and the villagers keep their distance from her in turn, as if neither party is entirely sure how to handle the other.

“They're dead then, are they?” the man with the cut on his face says, and he looks almost calm, except for the nervous way he keeps breaking crumbs off the piece of bread and letting them fall to the forest floor. No great loss there – that stuff tastes like unsalted gruel mixed with chalk. If he starts wasting her dried apricots, though, she'll have something to say about it. His eyes dart to the woods behind Helen like he's expecting an army of yoma to come chasing after them at any moment, and Helen gives him what she hopes is a reassuring grin. 

“Dead, yeah,” she says. “All of 'em. No monsters even close to here, I can promise you that.”

The old woman snorts derisively at that, and spits unceremoniously in the dirt at her feet. But when Deneve tells her that everyone is safe now, she offers them both a grudging, tight-lipped smile, and says, “aye, I reckon so.” And that's all that needs to be said about _that_.

They don't talk much in the village, except to inform the head councilwoman that the job is done, and reassure the populace that an injured farmer and an old woman and three merchants are human and not yoma, and if they get tossed out on their sorry asses for the crime of being unlucky – or lucky, whichever – Helen will have a few choice words to say to her bosses about which townships do and do not get priority for future assistance. It ain't true, but true is relative anyway, and sometimes a lie don't hurt. 

She wants a beer. She wants a beer and a warm bath, and Deneve keeps looking at her like she's got something she wants to say and then looking away and not saying anything, and she wants to understand what that's all about, but she doesn't think she's going to. The other warrior has her own province to return to, and like as not, this will be the last time they ever see each other. She remembers the crack she'd seen in Deneve's armor, right before the bloody-minded lunatic ran off to pick a fight with more yoma than Helen had even seen in one place before today, and it occurs to her to hope that's not a prophecy.

Maybe it is. There's always a few who burn out early, others who take a bit longer to slip or crack, and it doesn't always happen the same way, but it always happens. Inevitable. _Most don't make it through the first year_ , and she remembers Deneve's hand on her shoulder in the dark, golden eyes boring into her and the weight of juggment and concern. Blue skies above now, fluffy white clouds of the sort Helen always used to pick out pictures in as a trainee, hay and woodsmoke in the air and dirt roads beneath her feet, but that doesn't mean either of them have left that blood-soaked darkness behind them. Probably best not to forget that. But people don't survive getting captured by yoma either, and there's still five of them running around, maybe with families to get back to, husbands and wives and kids like the kid she had been once, before everything went to shit. She watches a pack of scrawny, shouting children chase each other across the village green and reminds herself that it's best not to forget _that_ either.

“Something on your mind, rookie?” Deneve says quietly, from somewhere behind her.

“Nah,” she says. “Not really. Just thinking about the way things didn't go.”

And Deneve just nods slightly, like that makes perfect sense to her. Maybe it does.

They watch the kids on the green for a little longer, as the sun sinks lower and the shadows lengthen, and Helen imagines that soon there will be parents calling them home, squabbles with siblings over chores and toys, the steady tread of life going on as it always does. She wonders what it would be like to be a part of it, maybe having kids of her own, maybe never even setting foot five miles beyond the boundaries of her own hometown. Maybe she would be happy like that. It's hard to say. The wind picks up, tugging at her cloak and her hair, and it occurs to her with a start that maybe she's happy now.

Deneve is the one to step away first, looking to the horizon with an unreadable expression on her face, and for the first time, Helen senses a hint of yearning in her aura, beneath the surface of that quiet reserve. There's a bit of her own restlessless in the other warrior, the same light refracted through a different lens.

“Moving on already?” Helen asks her.

“Already wasted enough time here,” she says, and Helen supposes she can't argue with that. They both have work to be doing. She wouldn't mind hanging around here a while longer anyway, but she knows how easy it is to overstay a welcome, and she likes the thought of leaving on a good note, leaving at least a few good memories behind her.

Deneve doesn't ask Helen to walk with her, but she doesn't forbid it either, and that's all the permission Helen has ever needed for anything. Besides, she's got no damn use for inevitability, never has, and she appreciates a challenge when she sees one. Deneve doesn't say anything on the road out, but she's tense in her silence, and Helen still can't shake the impression that she has something she wants to say. And when they reach the village outskirts, outside the gate where their paths diverge, she grips Helen's arm tightly and pulls her to a stop.

“You didn't have to do that back there,” she says. “Risk yourself, I mean.”

Helen looks around, taking in the land outside the village, swathes of farmland and orchard butting up against the dark line of forest, and stretches lazily with her arms above her head.

“That place had plenty dead bastards lying around already,” she says. “Didn't think they'd be needing any new ones.”

“I suppose it wouldn't do much for the décor,” Deneve says. Her voice is flat, but there's humor in her eyes, and something else there, darting around the edges, never seen full-on. Gratitude, maybe. Then she turns, without another word, and starts walking away.

And that, Helen thinks, that right there is just _so much bullshit_.

“Oy,” she shouts, not even sure what she wants to say or why she wants to say it but knowing there's something important and she can't just let it go. Deneve doesn't turn around. But she does stop.

“You do know I've only made thirty-four, right?” Helen says.

“And?”

“That means if you die first, that has got to make you the saddest, sorriest, most pathetic excuse for a soldier the Organization has ever seen. You got that?”

Deneve makes a low sound that might have been a laugh or just a huff of breath. “I'll keep that in mind.”

“You'd better.”

“I will.” She does turn, then, long enough to raise a hand in farewell, and Helen sees that she's almost – maybe – smiling. “I hope we meet again.”

“Yeah,” Helen says to herself, quietly, long after Deneve has passed out of earshot. “I hope so too.”

She looks around at the green and golden fields, the smoke rising from the chimneys behind her, and thinks that some of those trees might not be too difficult to climb, and she wouldn't mind a bit of fresh fruit for the road.

It's late summer, the air pure and sweet and sleepy with the drone of insects, and she's alive, and right now, that's the only thing that matters. It's going to be a good day.

**Author's Note:**

>  _So may the road we've yet to take_  
>  Leave a smile across our face  
> 'Til the laughter sheds the darkness far behind  
> We still belong in the cradle of humankind
> 
>  
> 
> _– Flogging Molly, “The Cradle of Humankind”_


End file.
